HWD Daily

Meet Your New Star Wars Life Coach

Like a farmer at the harvest, a Hollywood correspondent during Golden Globes week must check her equipment and marshal her resources carefully. Hello from Hollywood, where we’re stocking up on breath mints and hand sanitizer and getting ruthless with our R.S.V.P.s.

WOODY HARRELSON, LIFE COACH

It is hard to imagine asking Woody Harrelson for life advice—he seems more like the kind of laid-back friend you’d turn to on those “oh, fuck it” days. And yet, Hollywood loves to cast the Cheers alumnus in mentoring roles. He counseled Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games series, Hailee Steinfeld’s Nadine Franklin in The Edge of Seventeen, and now he’s in talks to play a character who advises Alden Ehrenreich’s young Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars spin-off directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, according to news broken by Variety’s Justin Kroll.

VF.com’s Joanna Robinsonbreaks down the directions in which Harrelson might take the character: “If he’s looking for inspiration within the Star Wars franchise, there are a number of beloved mentors to draw on. The options range from Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn to Frank Oz’s Yoda to Harrison Ford’sEpisode VII version of Han Solo to Ian McDiarmid’s dark influencer Palpatine to, of course, Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Fingers crossed he leans heaviest on Yoda.”

By J. Countess/Getty Images.

SLY STALLONE, ADAM DRIVER TO GET TOUGH TOGETHER

He may not have accepted that rumored job working for Donald Trump, but Sylvester Stallone has signed onto a new project with some political overtones, his first directing gig since 2010’s The Expendables. Deadline’s Mike Flemingreports that Stallone will direct Adam Driver in Tough as They Come, based on the best-selling memoir by Travis Mills, a quadruple amputee who was wounded on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Fleming writes, “At the heart of the story is the soldier’s relationship with his father-in-law, who stood by his side from the day he got home from the hospital. Driver will play Mills, and Stallone will play his father-in-law.”

ALL YOUR 90S BIG-SCREEN FAVES ARE NOW ON TV

Julia Roberts recently signed onto Today Will Be Different, the first TV series for Annapurna Pictures. The small-screen migration continues this week, with Meg Ryan coming aboard her first TV show in 30 years, a comedy for Epix called Picture Paris. The show is adapted from a 2011 short film that was written and directed by Brad Hall and stars his wife, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, that aired on HBO. According to Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, who has the exclusive, Ryan will play “a suburban mom whose dream trip to Paris with her husband after they become empty-nesters may not quite live up to expectations.”

DEPT OF GOOD RIDDANCE

Murderous cult leader Charles Manson is seriously ill and has been moved from a California prison to a hospital in Bakersfield, according to the L.A. Times’s Richard Winton and Hailey Branson-Potts. Manson has been serving nine life sentences for leading his followers on the 1969 crime spree that included the murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate at the home of her husband, Roman Polanski. For those wanting a deeper dive into the darkness, Karina Longworth’s cinema history podcast, You Must Remember This,brilliantly chronicled Manson’s twisted relationship with Hollywood in a 2015 series.

CASEY AFFLECK STRIKES BACK

While accepting his prize for Manchester by the Sea at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards Tuesday night, Casey Affleck tweaked the event’s emcee, New York magazine movie critic David Edelstein, by reciting some of Edelstein’s harshest reviews of his work. VF.com’s Katey Richwas there and brings back this choice selection: “He might as well be wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Shoot me.’ Luckily he’s not the lead.”